Think about it. If you were going to start a company that manufactures audio components, which would you pick? Arguably the worst business to get into would be the speaker business. Right? First, it’s painstakingly hard to market a new speaker that can break through in today’s ultra-competitive environment. Second, the development costs are relatively high because you have to invest in expensive cabinetry (at least on the high end) , electronic components, and drivers. And except for bookshelves, you have to absorb or charge so much more to get your product to your customers because of the relatively large size and heavy weight of the product. Third, and again especially if you have any floor standing speakers of any size, which, let’s be honest, any speaker company that wants to make money will have to have, you have to pay to hump these things to shows around the country and likely internationally as well.
Now let’s compare the life of a cable manufacturer. Let me state up front that I am a big believer that cables, interconnects, digital cables, and power cords can make a big difference in the ultimate sound of an overall system. Tires on a car, right? And yes, they also have several variables to deal with: silver, copper, tinned, dielectric, shielding, connectors, cryogenic, etc. But they’re all small, light, and relatively cheap. You can ship your product for next to nothing with almost no risk of damage, and you can travel to audio shows carrying all of your wares pretty much in a medium-sized backpack. Oh, and then there’s this. While speaker manufacturers are lucky if they can retail their products for four to six times their cost of production, cable manufacturers get to retail their wares for ten, twenty, or even fifty times or more of their manufacturing cost. There’s the well-worn tale of speaker manufacturers coming to shows in a rented minivan while cable manufacturers show up in Ferraris. It’s sad but funny because there’s some truth to it. I credit @erik_squires with generating this thread because in his recent thread he made me think about how hard it is to successfully create and market a truly successful speaker today. Anyway, it almost seems unfair, especially since speakers contribute so much to the ultimate sound of our systems while cables, while crucial, contribute RELATIVELY much less. What say you?
bdp24 a drummer of some note and experience is coming at this from an accuracy to pitch perspective and I believe is about the two very divergent approaches to our passion/ hobby, etc...
absolute accuracy
vs.
Baskin Robbins flavorizing....
I have several systems, one trying to push absolute accuracy and another for flavorizing and yet a third because I can....
it is useful to know what camp you are in and where others stand....especially as they give component and systems advice on seeking musical truth with a digitized re-release of Rumors .....that they have flavorized with a 2% distortion phono pre and speakers that are out of phase 20% of the time.
BTW the Balsa/ Carbon Fiber cone is not hyper low mass, it is hyper stiff and therfore pistonic... the very very specific and expensive type of balsa used is lighter than most BUT is higher mass than some aerospace foam cores..but those breakup.....
and for grins and because it matters , edge clamping distortion on a panel and the way panels store energy is audible... Those of us in the planer ( Apogee and Quad ) and pistonic ownership camps ( Vande and Thiel ) with an open mind and ears know this....of course, no speaker type is yet perfect or dominant......lots of work to do....
and microphones...those need a lot of work also....
@tomic601 , Yes, lots left to be done. Many options including open baffle, sealed box, ported box, transmission line, horns, panels, line arrays, single crossoverless drive units etc etc.
As of 2019 there is no clear design that is superior to the others. Implementation still seems to be more important than theory.
Hey kosst when humans do not know what's going on they mythologize and with the placebo effect they can talk themselves into believing their myths. Those of us with 1/2 a brain rely on well developed concepts to determine the likelihood of anything working and when we run into a concept that does not make sense we are correct in believing it won't work and it usually does not.
Music is a fundamental instinctive fondness in humans. Speaker manufacturing is not rocket science and when you see the prices of today's equipment it is easy to believe you can make a living at it and there are those rare manufactures like Polk and JBL that do especially well when they sell out to Harmon Kardboard. I had an idea once, making ribbon speakers using titanium foil which has a much higher resistance and tensile strength than aluminum. I made a lab version of the driver with neodymium magnets. It failed miserably. Not that it didn't work, it worked great except the Ti worked like a heating element and as it got hot the metal expanded. The waving expanded ribbon looked like a ghostly aberration. 100 hours and several hundred dollars worth of work down the tubes. I guess I'm not destined to be rich, in money anyway.
i actually think there is promise for a lighter / stiffer cone with titanium face sheets and a tapered ( wire EDM ) Ti honeycomb core, welded....no way to inspect the backside so some significant testing would be required re durability...
and yes, parts like that flying today....not cheap...
I also believe a 3 d printed core might also be possible if weights come down....2 heavy right now...
Well soix, I do have sympathy for many speaker manufacturers (though not all of 'em...) But I admit I feel less sympathy for cable manufacturers for some of the reasons you bring up. You can throw in many "tweaks" manufacturers in there as well. Some of the mark-up in the audio-tweak world is frankly hilarious.
I’m a huge fan of the Spica TC-50 and the Carver Amazing Loudspeaker. Both are relics but have strong followings to this day. To go outside the box like Carver has takes big cajons and he continues to do it, look at his new ALS. I liked the Time Window, DQ10, and the Polk 1c. I’m looking into getting a set of original Quads. Ugly as sin but magical with my EAR V20.
@mijostyn, yours is not an isolated case. The history of loudspeaker design is littered with tantalisingly intriguing designs which for one reason or another just didn’t make it to the market. Weren’t Naim Audio for one working on an electrostatic which also never got past the prototype stage?
Here’s a list of some notable product designs which fell by the wayside even after making it to the market.
@prof , on the other hand there appears to be no shortage of those products that you wish that had never made it to the market.
Here’s a disturbing report of industry doings coming from an experienced insider who probably failed to get many invites to industry dinners after his comments.
@cd318 Thanks for the link and the walk down memory lane. He certainly let us know what he thinks about tweaks;
TWEAKS
Anything from magic markers to allegedly reduce static during playback of your CD's, to cable elevators that elevate your cables of the floor to again reduce "static electricity", these devices are not only nonsensical but they just never really caught on with most audiophiles. To this day, they remain a very small niche supported only by the most "suggestible" audiophiles desperately trying to improve system performance while ignoring the obvious things that work such as speaker upgrades, better speaker placement, and fixing room acoustics problems.
the Tice clock, The realistic(radio shack) clock radio that when plugged into the same circuit caused an audible change in a reviewers hifi system so Tice runs to 'the shack' buys up all the units he can then quadrauples the price and claims he applys a special conditioner on the cordcoming out of the thing! I believe stereophile went as far as to compare the 'Tice' unit to the stock realistic unit. I think that folly destroyed his reputation.
"That's very hard to do when you're a nube that shows up and runs across some thread where a guy makes ludicrous claims that sound sophisticated because you're a nube that isn't up to speed. It seems to me that watching out for the nubes is more important than placating somebody's ego or hurting their sales figures."
Isn't that the way its always been? This is a perfect way to share our experiences. Just hope the newcomers read carefully.
Music is such a pleasure that it's entirely natural to want to experience it in greater fidelity.
I suspect because of the complexity involved most of the world's population stick to one piece systems and only a few adventurous souls are willing to explore the world of specialist Hi-Fi. Most, I daresay totally oblivious to the kind of the kind of marketing ploys used to separate them from their hard earned money.
It should never be this difficult, but it is. The sheer number of options available to the newcomer are quite staggering. A bewildering number of technologies and price ranges await. Imagine the shock of seeing cables costing >$100 per metre for the first time? Enough to frighten anyone off.
Hopefully, some of the contributions here on Audiogon will help to make those difficult choices easier. It really is possible to get much better sound than one piece supermarket systems without it costing the earth.
The Tice clock, The realistic(radio shack) clock radio that when plugged into the same circuit caused an audible change in a reviewers hifi system so Tice runs to ’the shack’ buys up all the units he can then quadrauples (sic) the price and claims he applys a special conditioner on the cordcoming out of the thing! I believe stereophile went as far as to compare the ’Tice’ unit to the stock realistic unit. I think that folly destroyed his reputation.
>>>>>>The Tice Clock is the poster child for controversial tweaks that gets mixed results. As if there isn’t anything that doesn’t get mixed results. You don’t have to look too far to find someone who doesn’t get the results he was expecting. That’s precisely why the letter from a disgruntled customer of the Tice Clock was published in Stereophile AND why the rebuttal from George Tice was also published in Stereophile.
To paraphrase George Tice’s rebuttal, there are a number of reasons some audiophiles don’t get good results with certain tweaks. These reasons include - but are not limited to - failure to follow directions, problems or mistakes in the test system, a mediocre or insufficiently resolving test system, hearing issues or lack of listening skill.
I remember an ad here on Audiogon several years ago for a pair Avantegarde Trios - with the copy saying something like: "These are big toys for the big boys". That reminds me of what michaelgreenaudio said above about "listeners today not being the trophy collectors of years' past".
I found myself thinking, "Wtf? Big boys? What a bunch of elitist, testosteroned crap is that?" Especially in a world where most of the population is content with Sonos and Alexa.
Kosst, I could not agree with you more. This activity is not just confined to Audio. Unfortunately, it seems to be an almost universal human activity. I think it is called swindling. The art of selling mythology. What are your favorite audio forums? Titanium does make great bicycles, lousy ribbons. I have an original Merlin. The welds are a work of art.
I don't see anything about audio as being hard to understand. You get it or you don't. I also don't see anything about listening as being all that tough either, you do or you don't.
Lost - yes lots of hard metals, engine mounts with exotic coatings, etc...
i think there are so few pistonic drivers that the case can be made that it is indeed indeed more difficult than it appears.
the low, relatively barriers to entry for crappy speakers and Stereo 70 clones ensure a long running supply of yet another Baskin Robbins flavor - no advance to the art... or the illusion....
Hi Kosst, well it might go a little deeper than that LOL.
I don't get so involved in the threads arguing here because of a few factors, and these are why I keep things simple here and spend most of my time pointing to more involved threads on TuneLand.
for example
On this forum when you ask to do actual lab testing in real time with real in-room systems the people who come up doing the most "talking" scatter. Do you know that over the past 5 years of posting on HEA forums when it comes time to set up testing labs with the folks who do all this talking not one of them has opted to do real time testing or listening evaluations. Some here have been "talking" in-room systems that don't even have an in-room system of their own. Others only use a keyboard to do their sharing and evaluating with no graphs, charts or testing to share.
I will love to be more technically involved here when this place becomes more real time oriented.
"I'd expect nothing less from you than such a simplistic answer. There's nothing simple or intuitive about Helmholtz resonance or the transconductance of a transistor. There's nothing simple or intuitive about listening for that matter, either."
I've known many people in music and audio that struggle with the concepts and I think that's why I've been doing nothing but music and audio my whole life as a profession. Mechanics and audio comes very natural for me. It's not something I have ever had to do much brain twisting over, it literally is something you know or you don't for those of us who are able to see audio from in between the lines. Combined with schooling it can be a breeze.
This might make some unhappy to hear that it comes easy to me and others but it is what it is. Arguing on an internet forum over what someone can or can not do is a little off the beaten path for me and is why I look at some of these posters as maybe a little on the funny side.
"It’s NOT something "you do you don’t". I suspect your simplistic understanding of the physics of music is what leads you to think rotating knobs and blocks of wood in a box constitutes tuning. The only means known to effectively tune an instrument or enclosure are to manipulate it’s mass, size, or tension, none of which rotating blocks of wood in a box actually do."
As with your other statements of questioning I’ve shown the forum here that Tuning is exactly what we do and have seen other users come up to verify. The great thing is when those folks here ask questions to attempt to disprove it ends up proving and ultimately leads listeners to the "tune", which of course is my goal.
kosst said
"The only means known to effectively tune an instrument or enclosure are to manipulate it’s mass, size, or tension, none of which rotating blocks of wood in a box actually do."
mg
If you look at the Tuning Bar Technology I use in speaker designing you will see there is a Tuning Bar that runs from one side of the cabinet to the other. I make several types of Tuning Bars at several pitches and tonal range. Kosst above mentions "tension" which is a huge part of my designing. From the outside of the speaker you can see the Tuning Bolts on either sides of the cabinet and in different places on different designs. On the inside are female threaded stationary bars. Going from one side to the other it goes like this. Tuning Bolt, washer (or other Tuning voicer), outside cabinet wall, soft pulp (or other material), inside cabinet wall. Then the bar runs to the other side doing the reverse. Bar, innerwall, pulp, outerwall washer and bolt head. Folks can see the construction on TuneLand with pictures and diagrams and more explanation of the tone and timbre controlling, but to answer Kosst’s comments yes as the Tuning Bolts are threaded into the internal Tuning Bar. One can apply more or less tension to adjust the tone of the cabinet. These speakers literally are acoustical instruments.
Nothing spins on the inside as kosst has alluded, but that's ok I understand this is a new technology for him and he is exploring this like anyone else. I also do want you to know kosst, I appreciate Q&As that have relevance to topics and more than happy to have you come to TuneLand to discuss things on a deeper level. The Agon forum is not really a technical forum, but that shouldn't stop people from visiting both sites to see how deep someone may want to go. It's all good and even though some start off as doubting toms at first it's fun when the commonalities start to happen.
To be honest coming from a guy who has been following Michael's ways and have been using his products for well over 5 years or so i can attest to his technologies and its methodology. They work exactly as how Michael describes it, please feel free to visit my personal thread on the TuneLand Forum.
The only means known to effectively tune an instrument or enclosure are
to manipulate it's mass, size, or tension, none of which rotating blocks
of wood in a box actually do.
According to how the ear works, either will work just as effectively. Humans and their ears are not weighted and utilized like an engineering based measurement system.
The measurement (as we know and use it) and the ear's method of hearing --- are only vestigially related.
“there are a number of reasons some audiophiles don’t get good results with certain tweaks. These reasons include - but are not limited to - failure to follow directions, problems or mistakes in the test system, a mediocre or insufficiently resolving test system, hearing issues or lack of listening skill.”
One important reason that was left out is when the so called tweak is just a gimmick to begin with. And in many cases this is the main reason.
Actually, no. the other way around. Anyone can stuff a driver in a box and call it a speaker.
OTOH, John Dunlavy was asked why he got into speaker design, after a successful career in cutting edge works, like the spiral backed antenna and other things that for the longest time were restricted works, as in black.
His reply was ( I paraphrase), "because it is the most difficult thing I know of".
So it goes all the way from idjit boy cutting a hole in a box, to total brain stress and breakdown... where one is dealing with 6 branches of physics, all tied intimately together and at their absolute peaks.
Where the end user can or cannot understand the difference between the two efforts -- that is the key, here. To top it off, there is no guarantee that idjit boy cannot reach high level sound qualities (as realized by a majority) by cutting said hole in box, vs that of Mr science and his totally stressed out 6 branches of physics in his multi-million dollar labs. Mr science may work well in his lab, but still make speakers that no one wants to listen to.
So, does the designer of the speaker know what they are doing, and does the buyer of the speaker know what they are hearing? And a thousand variations of those two end markers.
Since human hearing is a very individual thing with individual wiring (as varied as intelligence) and built by the act of hearing and learning, we get to sets of variations in perception that means only the basics can be translated, re the idea of hearing and speculating that something sounds good or bad--and speaking such to others..
There are no absolutes, here, and such is not likely to ever effectively appear.
Arguing about any of that...is a serious waste of time. No chance at resolution. All the fundamental data points say that there is nothing to resolve, no matter how much any one of us may frown and grunt and try to force any of it into factualization..
Likened to atoms, where we can get a group consensus, in a loose way.. but not an absolute consensus on/in the individual. (each element of the periodic table requires a certain amount of atoms to group together for their atomic aspects to emerge, and the number of atoms required to group together and have that bulk elemental aspect set appear....is different for each element)
Like every hobby, if you are willing to spend an exorbitant amount of money, someone will be there to take it from you. Audiphilia both benefits by and suffers from an incredible decentralization of producers. There are imaginative and talented people creating a dizzying diversity of products that present us with tremendous choice (and a never-ending supply of things to argue about) but they are also creating a market fog that makes it difficult and expensive to get noticed. Small producers have a very uncertain path to survive no matter how good their product is. My problem with speakers is that too few suppliers offer something that is unique and beautiful enough to be shown off yet integrated into the living room. AXPONA 19 was yet another display of fabulous technical achievement designed for the half of the world that possess a Y chromosome.
It's not. You plug the information into a computer and it spits
out the characteristics.
This is a bit of a glaring over-simplification. Yes, simulation tools are available to anyone for a fraction of what they would cost, if they were even available, decades ago, which makes the speaker designer's work much easier and lets them iterate through possible design choices with breathtaking speed and cheaply.
That doesn't make someone with simulators a decent speaker designer. :)
"So, show me the example where rotating a block of wood in a box measurably alters it’s acoustic properties, please."
an interesting an unexpected conversation
Just got off the phone with a reviewer who is getting ready for more of my products to write about. He happened upon this thread and had some questions for me and interesting comments.
From his point of view these threads need to be ultimately troll free if they are ever going to be helpful for the, as he said, "real audiophile". He had some choice words toward the trolls but also said that he feels readers are probably more discerning than we give them credit for. It was an 1.5 hour talk and he filled my ears with encouraging thoughts. What was interesting is he brought up the trolling happening here without me ever saying a word. He wasn’t surprised to hear me blow off these few and complimented me on my "cool".
One thing he said which I thought was interesting is when the troll comes up and makes a misstatement and then continues to repeat themselves it gives the opportunity for me to share the designing with accuracy. For example in the case of the Tuning Bar Technology this reviewer now has a better understanding of the hows and whys of the design and process as compared to before. Obviously we don’t have rotating blocks of wood inside of our speakers so the whole "premise" (reviewers word) of the troll is false, but he went on to say that the good press I get and will be getting is even more noticeable because of the attention the troll has highlighted.
Kind of a reverse psychology thing. The trolls are having a reversed effect on the readers. It was also interesting to be asked how my speaker and wire sells have been. When I shared they have been up and growing he pointed out that audiophiles are like bloodhounds, if a troll attacks a designer these days on public forums the reader is more apt to explore the product in question.
I’ve always wondered about this since I started posting over on Stereophile and now here, cause when I get trolled here it has always been followed by increased sales and very positive client reviews.
I don’t know I just enjoy listening & designing and find some of these forum type events as fascinating to a degree.
Far gone are the days of innovative inventions, these days when OEM-manufacturers came up with a new line of improved drivers once or twice a year, and countless small companies spread up with new ideas about improved response, dispersion, time alignment and minimalized distortion. Verdicts changed daily, and the self-acclaimed audiophiles had to fight some kind of Laokoon's struggle with the snakes to hold their ground.
In these days (until 1992) I ran a speaker developing and building business here in Germany. My products were easy to integrate in all kinds of living rooms and soundwise stood the test of time- still up to date.
But things have changed, especially when the market split up in two directions: On the one hand the high gloss-/low tech-companies using handsome speakers/drivers of far-east production to take their mass products into the malls and on the other hand these tinkers afflicted with conceit, turning out every little detail of their speaker to show how much better they are than anybody else on the market- and the purchasers clap enthusiastically.
Is there any way out of this mess?
Maybe- but only with regionally offered high-end niche products, not with speakers for amps providing several hundred watts before they come to life. But that requires a rethinking towards listening habits and listening abilities…
"My problem with speakers is that too few suppliers offer something that is unique and beautiful enough to be shown off yet integrated into the living room."
My conversations with clients and reviewers have been exactly along these lines over the last year. Recently clients and couple of reviewers have brought my speakers into their places and have given me the feedback that every speaker designer dies to hear. Unique, logical, cost effective and sexy. It's interesting to have been getting high end home designers calling along with reviewers telling me want they have been wanting me to do. Just really started with the most recent Rev6 craze. "creating a huge soundstage twice the size of my Sonus with such a small box" is one that I don't mind saying because it is published by someone else. The same comments have been made in reference to several super costly HEA brands vs the new Rev line. The instrument looking and sounding speaker is starting to be asked for by private mini show sponsors. We're doing those mini shows now and am excited for the feedback to continue. We have been seeing HEA run it's course of male fatal attraction for many years and the corner is being turned by the smaller size Class D movement and also the streaming revolution. For me this is perfect timing and I believe I'm not alone by any means. Big soundstages with smaller low mass boxes and the move toward tunable technology, pretty darn sweet and it's the industry who is asking for it, that's nice!
DCM Time frame speakers oh yes the best .You just made my day . I paid 550 for mine . Hope not getting any dealers in trouble ? Their all dead or in a Nursing Home .by now.
I’m not sure my comments fit this discussion as it has morphed into other areas. But I’d like to say that a good design is a good design. Many are timeless. Hence the market for vintage audio. I still remember living above the Opus One audio shop in Indiana PA while I was at college and wandering down to hear the large advent loudspeakers. I flipped a lot of burgers to do it, but still was able to afford a pair. Later on; when I was in the USAF, I met John Dahlquist at the Overture audio store in Wilmington DE and later when stationed in Japan was able to afford a pair on a sergeant’s salary (luckily the base exchange shipped them for free). Those speakers are still sought out today and people spend a great amount of time and effort to keep them working. There are still some surprising designs out there that should stand the test of time, the Paradigm Atoms come to mind. There are also those one and done companies that had a hit, but couldn’t continue like Spica and either failed or were absorbed by others. I loved the SC-50 the first time I heard them. Back to the discussion and no more reminiscing. I believe that a good design will win out. Tough though the market is. One current problem for the newby speaker manufacturer is the lack of small audio stores out there to demo your stuff. If you can’t convince the large stores to carry a new product, and no one can hear your stuff on Amazon, how do you get people to know you. Some have gotten around this by offering in home demo time periods with free return shipping, but that is costly to the new manufacturer. But I’m always out looking for the next great thing I cannot live without. As far as the cable argument goes, I’m for good quality, large conductor, and no funny stuff. I got a bunch of AudioQuest interconnects when a local audio store went out of business, they work fine. Digital cables aside, there is no reason to spend a lot of money on those as a one can be no better a one than a one can be, and zero is a zero. And, I build my own speaker cables. Currently I run B&W 802s3 and Matrix 1s in my TV room, B&W 805s in my office, Dynaudio Contour S3.4s in the livingroom, DQ10s in the bedroom, Dynaudio Excite X18s in the guestroom, and a bose lifestyle 20 in my woodshop in the basement. Oh, and there is a pair of Paradigm Atom v5s sitting and waiting to go with my folks when they sell their house and move into the retirement facility.
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